Group: River Plans Would Cause Harm

Published 8:00 pm, Tuesday, January 29, 2002

Ecological disaster looms if governments along the Danube River go ahead with plans to develop shipping routes, an environmental group said in a report released Thursday.

The plans, which include construction of new canals, dams and the deepening of parts of the river, threaten vital wetland ecosystems, the WWF said.

"We're saying: `Don't adapt the rivers to the ships, adapt the ships to the rivers,'" said Markus Schneidergruber, a WWF spokesman in Vienna.

Formerly known as the World Wildlife Fund, the organization changed its name to WWF several years ago to reflect its wider ecological focus.

The report is to be delivered soon to the governments of countries along the Danube, the Danube Commission and the European Commission, which helped develop some of the plans.

"I'm not sure if the EU in particular is aware that the plans are really doing such a damage to nature," Schneidergruber said in a telephone interview. "They have to rethink the plans and maybe find more ecologically sound solutions."

Pia Ahrenkilde, environment spokeswoman for the European Commission, said she had no comment because she had not yet received the report.

The WWF argues that improving ships, navigation and logistics systems would make many of the planned changes unnecessary.

Transport of bulk goods, which require ships that need deep rivers, are declining, meaning deepening the Danube to the proposed 3.5 yards wouldn't make economic sense, the group said, citing an independent expert.

A summary of the report identifies 11 "hotspots" where damage would particularly severe, including the World Heritage site of the Wachau region west of Austria's capital.

Other hotspots include the Straubing-Vilshofen area in Germany, where plans to deepen the river and dam it would destroy the last ecologically valuable stretch of the river in Germany, WWF said. In Croatia and Bosnia, plans for dams, drainage and irrigation projects would destroy the meanders and flood plains of Sava River, which flows into the Danube.

A planned canal that would link the Danube with the Oder and Elbe rivers would alter or destroy 990,000 acres of protected river sites in Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria, WWF said.

The Danube River, Europe's second longest after the Volga, is navigable from Ulm, Germany, to the Black Sea, a distance of 1,608 miles. Its river basin is home to 80 million people in 17 countries, and 20 million people depend on the river for drinking water.

More than 80 percent of the Danube's wetlands and flood plains have been destroyed by projects to improve flood protection, agriculture, power production and shipping, WWF said.

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Shipping on parts of the Danube were halted during NATO's 1999 air war against Yugoslavia, which left debris from bombed bridges in the river. A pathway of the river has been cleared, and remaining debris is expected to be removed this year.